About Cari

Cari Templeton is a 19-year resident of Palo Alto having moved here from Atlanta via Germany to pursue her technical career at SLAC and Google, where she worked for over 10 years.

Since leaving Google in 2017, Cari has been a public servant, starting with her work as a Palo Alto Planning and Transportation Commissioner in 2018, Vice Chair of Valley Water’s Measure S Oversight Committee since 2021, and most recently as a District Representative for Senator Josh Becker (2021-2023). Cari also volunteers for community nonprofits focusing on voter education and empowerment, parent-teacher communities, and promoting the election of women.

Before moving to Palo Alto, Cari grew up in a working-class family, where her father was an entrepreneur who invented and built special-purpose industrial robots. When she wasn’t hanging out with him at his shop, Cari attended public schools until college and was the first person in her family to earn a postgraduate degree. She has an undergraduate degree in Computer Science and Classics from Vanderbilt University, and a Master of Liberal Arts from Stanford University.